Sylvius the Mad

Sure you could. You just weren't ever given the opportunity to express that sorrow, but that doesn't mean the sorrow isn't there. That's absolutely true. I'd rather they weren't there at all (or their use was limited), but if they must exist the player needs to know about them during character creation. Regardless of what it was trying to do, it broke roleplaying.

The rules that govern the PC and his companions should be fundamentally the same rules that govern every other being in the game (I'll allow exceptions for gods). The PC shouldn't be immune to stun abilities while still being able to stun his enemies. The PC shouldn't hit vastly harder than his enemies do. The PC should not have vastly fewer hit points than his enemies do. Friendly fire should be equally deadly for all sides. Asymmetrical combat mechanics reached a laughable level with DA2, and that needs to be reversed. Eternity is just the place to do that.

BioWare was right when they said that the availability ot resurrection should have wide-reaching social effects. This is the justification they offered for why Dragon Age didn't have any resurrection magic in it, and that was a good decision. But that is not a good reason to abandon perma-death. Death can be made less-likely through an extensive injury system, but if someone is dead (and what constitutes death should be well established by the combat mechanics) then he should be dead. I'd also like to see the possibility of the PC dying and the party carrying on without him. No one character should be more important than the group in a party-based game.

TNO didn't know his past either, so whatever sort of man he was had nothing to do with his past. But within those parameters, you could do whatever you wanted. The game didn't come back later and tell you about the girlfriend you'd left behind in the vault, and about how much you missed her. That would have been appalling. I suppose I'm hoping that the approach they used in KotOR2 was a one-off experiment.

You shouldn't have to "get to know" the man your controlling. You created him. You should know everything about his mind from the moment you click "Done" at the end of character creation.

I'm getting that impression, but that should still leave open the option to create 2 or 3 (or 6) characters and then recruit companions to fill any gaps. I'm just looking for any way to have the one player-created PC not be forced to act as party leader and party spokesperson.

I continue to insist that whatever story the developers write is always just flavour text that fleshes out the setting. The story that matters is the one the player creates through his roleplaying choices. This is the authored narrative vs. emergent narrative debate, and I'm staunchly on the side of the emergent narrative.

A big part of KotOR2's narrative involved revealing the Exile's past to the player. The Exile wasn't ignorant of his past, but the player was. That's a huge problem. Revealing the PC's past to the player during play worked in KotOR and Torment because the PC was just as ignorant of his past as the player was, so these revelations could be done entirely in-character, and nothing learned there rendered previously made decisions incoherent. But in KotOR2, the player is denied information that should have informed the Exile's reactions to certain characters or events (Atris seems the most obvious). Roleplaying is, I think, a process that relies on perceiving the world through the eyes of your character, not through your own. But if the player isn't given relevant information that his character does possess, the player isn't able to adopt his character's point of view. For this reason, I'm a big fan of the blank slate character. Let us populate the mind of our PC. Let us have exhaustive knowledge of his background (to the extent that he possesses that knowledge). If there are gaps, let us fill those in ourselves, and don't have the game contradict us later. I think KotOR, NWN, and NWN2 all did this well. Fallout and Fallout 2 did this well. Torment is perhaps the best game ever at this. But KotOR2's narrative pulled the rug out from under the player in terms of his design of the Exile's personality.

If they going with the single player-created PC, I implore them to let us use any party member as party spokesperson, just as BG and BG2 allowed (in BG the option was even documented, so we know it was intentional - in BG2 it appears to have been an accident).

The traditional approach in modern CRPGs is to have the player create a single character and then collect companions along the way. But some do it differently. Icewind Dale. Storm of Zehir. Wizardry 8. And even BG and BG2 using multiplayer mode. These games allowed us to create the entire party, or multiple characters who together collected yet more companions. I would favour at least the option to create more than one character (and so far, that's what I'm expecting Eternity to offer). After all, it's a party-based game. The entire party is effectively made up of player characters - we just don't necessarily create all of them ourselves. There is, therefore, no reason to limit us to just one player-created character. Also, this would then virtually assure another feature I value, which is the ability to use any party member as party spokesperson. I loathe how most newer games force us to use the player-created PC as party spokesperson, even if there's someone better suited to the job available. We can assign combat roles within the party unconstrained by which character is player-created. We should be able to assign non-combat roles similarly. Thoughts? Should we be allowed to have more than one player-created character in the party?

I favour tying it to skill, but nly if we can use any party member as party spokesperson. The Infinity Engine games allowed for that (though I recently had to remind BioWare of that - even the guys who wrote BG2 appearred unaware that characters other than the Bhaalspawn could do the talking), and I hope Eternity will as well.

And while DS1 could be played like that, it could also be played to be more challenging. Playing a jack-of-all-Trades character made teh combat extremely difficult, as the encouters grew more powerful far more quickly than you did. Sacrificing power for versatility - somethng I think all games should offer - was entirely possible in DS1 If DS1 has a problem here, it's that versatility wasn't actually useful, so a versatile build was just a gimped build. But you're right that DS1 was laid-back, and that the combat did tend to play itself. That was, I think, DS1's best feature. I certainly don't want that. DS1 with just one character worked pretty well, actually, because a smaller party gained XP faster and thus had stronger members. The game you describe, though, sounds more like NWN, which also had a sort of click-and-watch combat system, but the player only controlled one character. And that was also a good game, so I don't really see the problem. For all the newer games, that paces appears to be "way too fast". Ideally, I want games without action-combat. I'd like combat to be stat-driven, and dice-driven, and have me issue all my orders while the game is paused. That's good news. Games with action combat tend to move so quickly that there's no time for players to experiment in a given encounter, because either the difficulty is too high and you die, or you don't die but everything else does so the combat is already over before you've learned anything.

In my book, that's good news. Anything that brings the gameplay closer to DS1 is a step in the right direction (I think even DS2 screwed it up).

I have DS 1 installed right now. It's a terrific game, and I play through it from time to time. I just wish there were more games like it.

The "Click-and-Watch" mechanic in the original Dungeon Siege is the best ARPG combat I've ever played.

The original Dungeon Siege was far from tactical, but it was also not a Diablo-style click-fest. I'd say Dungeon Siege's combat was mostly based around character-bulding (you'd design and equip the characters, and then they would fight based on that).

No, that tells me nothing. So the the characters don't ever just keep doing what you've told them to do without your continued input?

I haven't followed this game's development at all, but I am a big fan of the original Dungeon Siege. What is DS3's basic combat mechanic? Is it click-to-attack like Diablo, or is it target selection followed by auto-attack like Dungeon Siege? I have a strong preference for one over the other, but it will be easier to get a straight answer if I don't mention which I prefer. Thanks.

And I suspect EA isn't terribly pleased with the situation, either.

Regardless of whether there's a party, it's the need for constant inputs I'd like to avoid. Needing to select a new target every 2 seconds isn't fun. Having to click to swing my sword or fire a spell (or even hold down a button to keep doing it) isn't fun. If the enemies don't routinely fall in 1-2 blows, then selecting a new one isn't a big deal. But if I'm one-shotting everything (as was often the case in Dungeon Siege, particularly early in the game) I'd like my character not to stand there like an idiot in-between foes.

It's the need for constant clicking, when the character should be able to just keep doing what I had him doing, that annoys me. This is why I can't stand Diablo, and couldn't play The Witcher (that combat system was frightful). I do not mind at all having to identify a target for my characters, but assuming it's an action game rather than a detailed tactical game (more like Diablo and less like Dragon Age), then the party members will ostensibly be able to select a target themselves. The question then becomes whether we can let the AI run all the characters. Dragon Age actually had a mod (made by BioWare - they'd use it for testing) that allowed you to leave the tactics on for all of the characters at once (effectively unselecting everyone). Dungeon Siege allowed the focus of gameplay to be on building an effective party rather than getting viscerally involved in the combat.

Which one will DS3 resemble (if either)? I really enjoyed the core gameplay in Dungeon Siege. You design your character, select your party members, ansd they fight according to their abilities, with you having the option to give them greater direction. but if the player does nothing, the characters (all of them, even the main PC) still engage in combat on their own based on their variouos settings (willingness to engage and pursue and whatnot). DS2 did nothing of the sort. DS2 adopted a much more Diablo-style of combat that required constant input, and the selected character would never do anything at all without direction. Dungeon Siege's combat was rather derisively referred to as "click-and-watch". And I loved it. Assuming DS3 resembles its predecessors at all, will the Dungeon Siege gameplay style be available to players?

KotOR could have solved most of this problem by allowing advancement in your original class after going to Dantooine. If you liked being a Soldier, you could keep being a Soldier and let your force sensitivity stagnate. But we didn't get that option. KotOR2 could easily keep exactly the same exiled Jedi storyline and just allow more diverse character advancement. Let us take non-Jedi classes, even at the start.

BioWare does tend to have a very flat representation of evil, particularly in the options available to the player. Being evil generally involves being mean for no other reason than to hurt people. That can happen, but to make it the only option makes evil synonymous with sadism, and evil is much more broad than that. I do not think, however, that Star Wars always presents that same flat evil. Darth Vader had purpose behind his cruelty. He wasn't being cruel just because he liked hurting people - there was an overarching motive... Order. He even mentions that to Luke - bringing order to the galaxy. Darth Vader clearly sought totalitarian rule of the galaxy, but he wanted to rule an orderly galaxy, and order is arguably a benefit to some people. Even the destruction of Alderaan doesn't appear to be strict sadism. We know nothing about Alderaan (except the words of Leia, who lies to Vader with every word she speaks), so it could be a viable military target. At the very least, the royal house actively harbours rebels.